Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Glasgow Live
Glasgow Live
National
David McLean

Unearthed Glasgow photos show Gorbals doctor who wrote of slum conditions in 1920s

Much has been written about the poverty and destitution that existed in the Gorbals for much of the 20th century, but only those who lived or worked there at that time can truly know the hardships that were faced.

Enter Doctor of Medicine George Gladstone Robertson, who after graduating from the University of Glasgow in 1923, opened a GP practice in the Gorbals. While he was there, tending to the notoriously impoverished district's ill and needy, Dr Robertson recorded his experiences in meticulous detail.

Decades later, in 1970, Dr Robertson's findings were published in a book, 'Gorbals Doctor'. In it he tells of a life's work dedicated to medicine and of the hardships endured by his patients living in the slums.

READ MORE: These 18 Glasgow photos show a vastly different Gorbals in 1983

Described as "grim" but "fascinating reading", the book was praised for its candid documentation of the squalid living conditions that faced Gorbals residents half a century earlier.

Dr Robertson describes one of the most deprived blocks at 197 Centre Street, where "over two hundred people were crowded together in this miserable and hellish tenement".

In the 1920s, the Gorbals was home to more than 85,000 people, all crammed into an area that covered just two per cent of Glasgow. Unemployment was rife and many resorted to alcoholism and crime. It was a dangerous place to be - especially late at night.

In one passage Dr Robertson details the sad sights he would often encounter on his evening visits to residents' dwellings.

Sign up to our Glasgow Live nostalgia newsletters for more local history and heritage content straight to your inbox

He wrote: "The eerie sounds and flickering shadows of the gas lights were only minor obstacles with which I had to contend on my night visits.

"Men, and sometimes women, too drunk to crawl through their own doorways, lay in the passages. Some I managed to avoid, but more often than not, I would stumble and trip over a sprawling figure to be greeted on some occasions by a stream of oaths from the body I had jerked back into consciousness.

"This was humanity living at its lowest level and the drunks strewn in untidy heaps, many of them lying in their own vomit, would soon become a shameful symbol of the Gorbals, and bring a stigma on Glasgow which the city would find difficult to erase."

But while the Gorbals' social ills were well-known, it would take decades for the problems to be addressed.

In the 1960s, the old slum tenement blocks were fast disappearing for modern flats and high-rise developments as the authorities sought to improve the lives of residents.

With the publication of his book in May 1970, Dr Robertson returned to the Gorbals and was photographed by Sunday Mirror press photographers in one of area's few surviving tenement back courts.

The photos show him speaking with groups of youngsters in a derelict stretch of the Gorbals that had yet to receive the urban renewal treatment.

Click on the gallery link below to view the pictures, taken on May 26, 1970.

READ MORE:

Eight former Glasgow Woolies stores and what's there now

Forgotten railway burger chain tucked away in Glasgow's stations in the 1980s

Ex-British Rail worker shares amazing 1980s images of Glasgow's railway stations

New BBC series to shed fresh light on Glasgow's Ice Cream Wars of the 1980s

Former Glasgow trader recalls heyday of Paddy's Market and life lessons he learned there

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.